Thursday, July 28, 2005

A little programming note for TV tonight. English Premier League champs, Chelsea, are playing reigning MLS champs, DC United, in DC this evening. The game will be on ESPN2 at 8pm EST.

It's just an exhibition but it's rare when you get to see how an MLS club stacks up against a powerhouse like Chelsea. To give you an idea of the imbalance of the two teams, the annual payroll for Chelsea is $200M vs. $2.2M for DC!

That's some serious cash and that cash will buy you players like John Terry, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Arjen Robben, Hernan Crespo, Damien Duff and many others. Any of those players would be the top player in MLS. Meanwhile, the star attraction for DC is a 16-year-old kid. Granted that kid is Freddy Adu (who scored a beauty of a goal last weekend) but he isn't in Chelsea's class yet.

UPDATE: As expected, Chelsea won last night 2-1. However, DC played them tight and even led briefly. I give Peter Novak, DC's coach, credit for pressuring Chelsea deep in Chelsea's half and, in general, playing them aggressively. That strategy could have yielded a blowout for Chelsea if DC had come out flat. But DC looked sharp (at least for the first half) and crisp with their passing and tackling.

I would imagine that DC will play with a lot of gusto, but it'll be difficult for Peter Nowak's boys to get the win. Maybe the Chelsea players will be just as arrogant as Mourinho (what an asshat that guy is!) and not take the match too seriously.